Haunted

I’ve lately been haunted by the presidential election of 1840.

You might, reasonably, think I could hardly pick a more boring election to be haunted by. But it began by running into the The Might Be Giants version of the campaign tune, Tippacanoe and Tyler Too, which I have to admit rather rocks. I bought it off iTunes, but then found myself facing mentions of Harrison, Tyler, and Van Buren everywhere I went. An article I was reading to pass time mentioned that O.K. possibly received its popularity from that election, to refer to Ol’ Kinderhook, i.e., Van Buren. I overhear someone comparing something short-lived to Harrison’s term in the presidency, and so on.

I have no idea why this sort of coincidence happens. It has happened before, and while I’ve tried to ascribe some sort of omen-like meaning to it, there is none. It’s just a weird loop. Of course, confirmation bias probably plays a part — I get used to seeing it, and so notice it when otherwise I wouldn’t. But it’s still weird that there would be *that* many mentions in popular culture and conversation of something so incredibly dull as the Presidential Election of 1840.

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This entry was posted on March 14, 2007 at 7:29 pm and is filed under Weird . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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One Response to “Haunted”

That is a very strange, obscure thing to keep coming up. I never know what to do with these things. One day the term “Ruby Tuesday” came up in different contexts three times in one evening, and thereafter several times in the next week. What does it mean? Nothing? I always have this nagging feeling that the universe is trying to tell me something in these moments, but I never know what. After awhile, it probably is just confirmation bias, especially when it’s something popular, like mine, but, the presidential election of 1840? Wow.